


strong when you are weak

by ceserabeau



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 04:17:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1291018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceserabeau/pseuds/ceserabeau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is <i>fine</i>.</p><p>If she says it enough, maybe eventually it will be true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	strong when you are weak

**Author's Note:**

> So I rewatched The Fox and The Wolf, and Crystal Reed in that elevator scene was _amazing_. She made it so believable and real and heartbreaking, and it was as Oscar worthy as anything else has been this season. 
> 
> Title from Sun Tzu:  
> Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.

There are hands on her shoulders, pushing her down and the water is ice cold, spilling up over her skin, climbing down into her lungs, and she’s shaking, she’s screaming, she’s dying –

She let’s go and the water swallows her voice.

-

She dreams of darkness, of blood and guts, of murder and merry murderesses. Everything is red, and she never knew there were so many shades.

The bags under her eyes grow larger, darker, and her head is fuzzy all the time, packed with cotton wool. Her father gives her worried looks across the breakfast table and her teachers give her identical ones across the classroom. Her friends look worried too, but that’s everyone’s default expression these days and she’s not the only one who’s losing her mind a little bit.

No one ever actually asks if she’s alright though; not her dad, not Scott, not Lydia, not anyone.

Because she is an Argent. She is steel wrapped in the pretty skin of a girl. She is the queen of poisons. She is _fine_.

If she says it enough, maybe eventually it will be true.

-

There’s a bow in her hands and she’s leaving bloody palm prints all over its cool metal, red against black. The darkness closes in and there’s something stalking her through the trees, a familiar figure creeping whisper-soft through the forest.

She loads the bow, takes aim as she breathes in, waits until it breaks the tree line, a twisted creature coming for her across a  carpet of crisp, red leaves. It wears Kate’s face, snarling, vicious – her mother’s face, shrieking, blood-soaked – her own face, screaming, wretched -

She exhales, lets loose, and the arrow flies true.

-

Isaac puts his mouth over hers and it feels like drowning again, a heady rush of blood, a thrumming under her skin.

He’s not Scott, and that’s kind of the point: he is everything Scott is not, shy, reserved, quiet in an unhappy way, doesn’t speak unless spoken too, broken in more ways than one. Where Scott was warm and soft and gentle, Isaac is a bolt of lightning, electric. He has razor sharp edges, and she pushes him to push her so that she can feel them against her skin, painful but so blindingly bright.

When he’s pressing her down into the mattress or biting her lip bloody or sliding into her too fast, it’s the only time she feels alive.

-

There’s electricity in the air and on the ground, bright as lightning, loud as gunfire, and just as dangerous.

Isaac pushes her out of the way and she stumbles, pain shooting up her wrist as she lands on the grass. But it’s nothing compared to the way her heart threatens to explode when she sees him fall and not get up.

-

It’s Stiles.

Of course it’s Stiles, adorable, geeky, funny Stiles who is everyone’s friend, the one person you can always rely on in any crisis. And now there’s a monster in his body, eating up his mind, and it aches somewhere deep down because out of everyone, out of all of them, it shouldn’t be him.

Scott is falling apart, no matter how hard he tries to keep it together. Lydia too, the way she can’t summon a smile giving her away. Even Derek, tough, resilient, unemotional Derek, is close to his breaking point.

So she gets her knives and her arrows and her wolfsbane, and swallows her sobs, squashing them down until her lungs burn and her throat stings with the effort of keeping them in.

-

The doors slide shut, and she feels the familiar shaking of her hands, the stinging of her eyes, the trembling of her lip. No, no, not now, there’s too much at stake. So she bites her lip, clenches her fists, tries to slow her pounding heart and will away the paranoia and anxiety.

She doesn’t stop it fast enough because there’s a heavy hand on her shoulder, a comforting weight, and the Sherriff says, “Are you okay?”

It shakes something loose inside her and it’s like drowning again, the soul-sucking, gut-wrenching moment of panic swelling inside her. She opens her mouth to scream, and just like that the words start to come, an endless flow of all her pain and fear, the darkness of the nights and the way the light only shows her where the shadows hide.

As they spill from her lips, she feels the weight lift, the burden lessen: she isn’t fine, but she’s on her way.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I Don't Know Anything](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1291924) by [WibblyWobbly_TimeyWimey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WibblyWobbly_TimeyWimey/pseuds/WibblyWobbly_TimeyWimey)




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